Electron beam therapy: Microdosimetric calculations for the quantification of fundamental damaging processes
- Electron beam therpy is used to treat tumor cells by irradiation with high energy electrons (HEE). The irradiation is performed by medical linear accelerators.
By interaction of the HEE with the irradiated tissue a broad spectra of secondary electrons and water dissoziation products is generated.
These products interact with biomolecules, especially DNA, by various processes. The disentanglement of the resulting direct- and indirect damage to DNA and other cellular components is still under debate.
To increase the efficiency of future therapies a better understanding of the microscopic damaging processes is highly important.
Especially the various contributions of the secondary species produced, such as low energy electrons (LEE) and radicals is far from understood and quantified.
To increase the understanding we present a combination of a microdosimetric simulations and experiments to quantify the damage by means of electron scattering and diffusion simulations within theElectron beam therpy is used to treat tumor cells by irradiation with high energy electrons (HEE). The irradiation is performed by medical linear accelerators.
By interaction of the HEE with the irradiated tissue a broad spectra of secondary electrons and water dissoziation products is generated.
These products interact with biomolecules, especially DNA, by various processes. The disentanglement of the resulting direct- and indirect damage to DNA and other cellular components is still under debate.
To increase the efficiency of future therapies a better understanding of the microscopic damaging processes is highly important.
Especially the various contributions of the secondary species produced, such as low energy electrons (LEE) and radicals is far from understood and quantified.
To increase the understanding we present a combination of a microdosimetric simulations and experiments to quantify the damage by means of electron scattering and diffusion simulations within the Geant4-DNA framework.
In combination with in-liquid irradiation of plasmid DNA it possible to determine microdosimetric quantities for biomolecules in liquid environment.
The presented method was applied to the irradiation of plasmid DNA (pUC19) in water.
This opens up new possibilities in radiation research to quantify the dosage-damage relationship for microscopic plasmid volumes under well defined physiological condition.…